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By Bill Harris, Centerpointe Research Institute       [Page 1/2]

Does life, for the most part, “just happen” to you? How  much of what happens in your life seems to be under your control? Are you creating your life, or is it creating you?  

Though you’re probably not aware of them, certain internal thinking processes  (what I call your Internal Map of Reality) generate several key aspects of your life: 1) nearly all of your internal feeling experiences, 2) your behaviors, and 3) the people and situations you attract into your life, or become attracted to. 

Whether your emotional states are positive or negative; whether your behavior leads you to what you want, or what you don’t want; and whether you attract people and situations that help you experience what you want, or what you don’t want, everything begins with your Internal Map of Reality.

It’s the software that creates your life—though unlike most software, you can rewrite the code whenever you need a different result. 

In doing so, you can create whatever you want in life. Yes, it often seems as if what you feel, how you behave, and what happens to you is largely driven by your external circumstances. 

However, there is substantial evidence that almost everything you experience  begins with certain internal thinking processes—processes you can learn to direct. 

If you’re unaware of how your Internal Map of Reality works (most people are), you’ll create your experience of life, to a large degree, automatically, as if on autopilot. 

With a little bit of practice, though, it’s possible to become aware of these  processes and learn to operate them intentionally.

In doing so you gain  an amazing degree of control over what happens in your life.

In fact, those few individuals who master their internal processes, and use them  intentionally, could be called true Masters of Life.

They represent the tiny fraction of humanity who are able to intentionally create whatever they want in their external world, as well as what happens in their internal, feeling world. 

You can be one of these people, regardless of your present or past circumstances.

There is, of course, a price to pay to achieve such mastery, but paying it can actually be enjoyable. 

And, the rewards are huge.. 

A few aspects of your Internal Map of Reality are inborn. Most, though, are learned, and entirely under your control.

Most of how your Map of  Reality was formed happened during childhood, representing your best attempt to resourcefully deal with the unique set of circumstances you faced in your family situation.

Then, as long as this Internal Map continues to operate, it automatically shapes the  rest of your life. You can, however, take that Map off of autopilot and consciously and intentionally reshape it.

And, in doing so, you can take charge of your life.

An Internal Map of Reality can  work well even if it is operating automatically.

A positive childhood, with positive mentoring and the protection of loving and supportive parents, leads to a positive and resourceful Internal Map of Reality. 

If you have such a Map, you will tend to focus on possibilities and find ways to manifest them.

You will more often than not experience positive emotions, and be more likely to behave in resourceful ways.

You will also more often attract or be attracted to people and situations that will help you create the outcomes you want. 

A less-than positive childhood, however, without such mentoring  and protection, and possibly with some amount of emotional trauma or abuse, will lead to a much different Map of Reality, one that will generate more negative results.

If you have such a Map, you will experience unpleasant emotions more often. You will tend to behave in less-than resourceful ways.

And you will attract, or be attracted to, people and situations that will quite often help you create negative results and outcomes.

Your Map of Reality could be at one of these extremes, or  somewhere in the middle. The range of possibilities, and the exact details of each Map, is unlimited.

Whatever your Internal Map of Reality, though, it will generate your results in life. 

An unhealthy Map of Reality will tend to focus on how to be safe in what seems to be a dangerous world.  If you have such a Map, much of your attention will be directed toward avoiding danger, whether physical or emotional.

Positive possibilities will seem less real, or non-existent. You will feel good less often. You will generate more negative than positive emotions. You will behave in a less  resourceful manner.

Ironically, you will often attract the very dangers you seek to avoid. 

A HAPPY CHILDHOOD  ISN’T ENOUGH           

Obviously a positive childhood is preferable to a negative one. But  whether positive or negative, there is an even more important distinction we could make about your Internal Map of Reality: whether you are consciously aware of how it operates and how it creates your life, and are able to operate it intentionally, or whether it operates automatically, outside of your awareness. 

If you are unaware of how your Internal Map creates your results and experience of life, you won’t see and therefore will be unable to take advantage of an almost unlimited number of additional choices — choices that could be used to create  different (and potentially better) results.

Even if your Map of Reality is generally positive, you will still be operating within a narrow  range of possibilities.

Though better off than a person with an unhealthy Map of Reality, you’re still exercising only a fraction of your potential.

There are, then, two potential challenges to creating a resourceful and fulfilling life.

The first is an unhealthy Map of Reality, created by a dysfunctional childhood.

The second is a lack of awareness of how that Map automatically creates your life. Luckily, because Internal Maps can be changed, both problems are solvable.

If you are willing to put forth a certain amount of effort, you can become aware of how your Internal Map works, and learn to operate it consciously and intentionally.

This allows you to take charge of three key aspects of your life: how you feel in each moment, how you behave, and the people and situations you attract or are attracted to. 

When you learn to operate your Internal Map intentionally, your feeling life changes.

Instead of reacting to whatever happens around you, you can decide to experience happiness, inner peace, motivation, enthusiasm, compassion, imagination, focus, persistence, insight, love—or any other emotion or feeling state.

One aspect of your Internal Map of Reality are what cognitive psychologists call strategies. 

Strategies are certain combinations of internal representations (a fancy name for thoughts) that lead to the feeling states (and, also, the behaviors) you experience in each moment. 

Right now, it’s very likely that your cognitive strategies are running along automatically—which means they are creating your feeling states automatically.

You can, however, learn to operate them intentionally and, in doing so, decide how to feel in any moment.

If you’re like most people, it can seem as if emotions “just happen”, that they suddenly come over you, completely unbidden and out of the blue.

Or, that feelings are caused by whatever is happening around you.  Someone cuts in front of you on the freeway, and you feel angry, or scared.

Despite appearances, though, your Internal Map of Reality is the real source of your feelings.

External circumstances provide a trigger, but it’s what you do with that trigger that determines your emotional response. 

When you direct your attention unconsciously and automatically (based on how your Internal Map was pre-set during childhood), you have little if any control over your emotional responses.

Instead, you experience certain pre-programmed feeling states over and over, automatically.

No wonder it seems as if your feelings come unbidden, or that they are caused by external circumstances.

When you learn to operate your Internal Map consciously and intentionally, though, you can choose your emotional response, regardless of circumstances.

Second, learning to operate your Internal Map of Reality consciously and intentionally allows you to take control of your behavior, to act in purposeful ways that lead to the outcomes you want.

Actions begin in the mind, and when your internal processes are intentional, your actions will also be intentional.

Intentional actions then lead to intentional results. Even when actions don’t turn out the way you hoped, your intentional and conscious control over your Internal Map allows you to turn challenges and obstacles, and what looks like failure (as the cliché says), into opportunities. 

Not all actions begin with a thought.

(Some actions—some fear responses, for instance—are generated by more primitive parts of the brain, and are more properly described as reactions because the behavior happens a millisecond before our cognitive response to it, and is therefore not under voluntary control.)  

Most purposeful action, however, does begin with a thought, with a focusing of attention.

You get up from your chair to answer the door because the doorbell focused your attention in a certain way, which generated certain thoughts (and possibly certain feelings), which then generated your behavior.

How you focused your attention created an internal state (motivation) that led to action. When focusing is automatic, the  behaviors generated will obviously also be automatic.

On the other hand, the more intentionally and consciously you use your Internal Map, the more likely you’ll generate resourceful, intentional behaviors. 

Finally, your Internal Map of Reality drives a third key aspect of how you create your life—the people and situations you attract or are attracted to.

With an Internal Map operating automatically, in a certain way, you will notice and become attracted to certain people and situations.

Set it up in another way, and the cast of characters and situations will change.

If you can learn to change your Internal Map depending on the outcome you want (instead of just putting up with the pre-set outcomes you automatically generate with an unconscious Map of Reality), you can intentionally attract the people and situations you need or want in order to accomplish your objective—whether it’s a feeling, a behavior, or a particular outcome in the world.

Your Internal Map of Reality generates certain verbal and non-verbal cues.

These cues cause others to notice (or fail to notice) you, or to become attracted (or not be attracted) to you.

Based on these cues, people are led to become involved with you in some way, or to not notice you at all.

In many ways, life consists of a complex matrix of cues, some we send out and others we receive, all regulated by our Internal Map of Reality. 

In a similar way, you notice and become attracted to other people or to certain situations, based on how they mesh with what your Internal Map of Reality has been pre-set to create. 

It’s as if our Internal Map of Reality has a script, and it finds the characters and situations you need in order to create that script in reality.

The script could be a drama, a comedy, a tragedy, or a success story. 

Your life, however, does not need to be script-driven. You can step outside the world of automatic, scripted outcomes.

        Continued on Page 2.

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